Coming from Brands, lots of focus and effort was put into my mental approach to the race meetings. It was the opportunity that cropped up from the meeting and regardless of the result I wanted to bounce back from a personal performance perspective.
Friday was a very solid day both for me and the car. Using the new testing technique that I worked on over the winter we had a car I was super comfortable with from the get go. We experimented with a few different aero settings to try and find some balance options that we could use if needed. I had put in some super solid times very close to the lap record and was happy enough to not do a high mileage and save some tyre and engine. It was difficult to know our relative pace as Danny Andrew didnt test and we don’t log the Factory Spires lap times as its hard to know the degree of sandbagging going on.
Quali worked well for me. The method and processes that I’ve been working on came together super well and I managed to put in two solid times very early in the session. With a pitboard that had me on pole by over a second I continued to cruise around taking alternative goes and faster laps but couldn’t manage to go any quicker. At the flag I was on pole by 9 tenths to Richard Morris in his factory Spire in second. With such a big margin I was feeling confident going into the first race.
Getting a solid start for the first race allowed me to lead by 3 seconds at the end of the first lap. From that point on I continued to pull away from the chasing Danny Andrews and Spires to eventually win by just over 14 seconds. Considering how short the lap is I was super happy with this. However, at points during the race I was underdriving the car slightly and allowing external thoughts to drift in. This needs to be eliminated as when I dont have such a pace advantage it will not be good.
Similar to Brands Hatch, Race two was a different affair. I got another good start (something that has been a trend so far this season) and was followed closely through Turn one by Danny Andrews in his Mittell. For the rest of the race Danny was stuck to my rear bumper, he never managed to make a move but I was under constant pressure from start to finish. I’m not exactly sure where his massive pace increase came from but it made for an exciting time. Despite this pressure, I managed to turn in super consistent times with little to no mistakes and eventually win by 8 tenths at the line.
I am very happy with this past weekend’s performance overall. I performed under pressure when I needed to and the process just worked. Especially pleased because despite being up the road most of the weekend, when I suddenly wasn’t I could still turn out consistent fast times and bring home the car for maximum points.
